Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Motor Scooters of the Bad Kind

Found this album - Montrose, by Montrose - on my Zune. I can't remember buying it or even putting it on the machine, but since it was there...

It takes me back. I remember listening to Bad Motor Scooter in 1974. Quite a guilty pleasure as I was a total rock snob and Montrose were very much low-rent. Listening again, it's interesting how much they resemble the equally second-side-of-the-Monopoly board Guns 'n' Roses. Rock Candy in particular sounded like it could be on Spaghetti Incident. Maybe it was?

For everyone who thinks Michael Jackson invented bad-meaning-good and those who know better and think it was invented the previous year, in 1987, take a listen to Bad Motor Scooter. No idea why bad meant good in 1974, but it apparently did. Unfortunately for me, as a Brit, and innocent of slang, it really did conjure up getting on a spavined Vespa and trying to ride across the prairies with the ol' parka flapping in the breeze (or lack of breeze as you putter across the continental divide).

The first line is "If you get lonely on your daddy's farm just remember I don't live too far" (which he characterizes as less than a day away). Do rock bands still cater to people who get lonely on their daddy's farm? I don't think so. Maybe all those coffeehaus mandolin-plunkers failing to remember the people on their daddy's farm is the cause of all this Heartland Angst we've heard so much about during this election cycle?

Rock Candy's first line is "You're rock candy baby, you're hot sweet and sticky," one of rock's premier dental caries tracks. Like Bad Motor Scooter, it conjures up a vivid image, but in my case it's not of a horny woman dripping honey, but more like finding a lump in my school blazer pocket and drawing it out to find a clipped bus ticket stuck to a hard candy covered in lint. (Unlike Def Leppard's Pour Some Sugar On Me, which takes me away to a dream place where I've staked the whole band spreadeagled on top of an anthill.)

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I share a house with a bunch of geckos, a chameleon and approximately seven goldfish. The largest and dumbest goldfish is called John Galt. I can't remember why. Friend me on LiveJournal here. Friend me on Facebook here.